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Perch

Perch was set up in Dublin in 2008 with the aim of improving the quality of everyday living through design. Specialists in research-led design for applied human movement, the Perch team works from a deep understanding of the emotional and physiological requirements of the active human.

Their approach to critical thinking and problem solving is truly interdisciplinary and they always strive to find that perfect balance between interactive simplicity, scientific relevance and aesthetic beauty.
Perch has forged long, meaningful client relationships and works in unison with clients, right through the processes of discovery, trials and international commercialisation. This way of working builds strong connections and enables true, disruptive innovation. Perch also actively participates in the post-commercialisation phases, to continually improve standards and gain a deeper understanding of each sector in which they work.

Thomas Montgomery

Thomas Montgomery Ltd is one of Ireland’s leading contemporary soft seating and upholstered furniture manufacturers. Established in 1975, the company has built a reputation for designing and manufacturing high quality upholstered furniture for the office and commercial interiors markets. Quality through design is at the heart of the company ethos and is encapsulated in every product.

Thomas Montgomery’s team of skilled designers, craftsmen and upholsterers understands what is needed to deliver the highest quality product and service. They have worked with architects and designers on a number of prestigious projects throughout Ireland and have the imagination, willingness and skill to work on customer specific projects while continuing to grow the company’s own range of design-led furniture. Thomas Montgomery Ltd is now working to develop and produce design-led office and commercial furniture which reflects the evolution of the modern working environment, supports the technology driving these changes and fosters interactions among workers of the 21st century.

Featured Work

Float is a soft seating solution for the modern work environment. It consists of a central, 360-degree swivel seat and arm/back rest that not only supports the user, but also acts as a surface for working and collaborating. Based around the idea of encouraging and improving informal interactions for workers, the concept grew from observation of people working individually and in small groups. The aesthetic is guided primarily by the spatial requirements of the dynamic human form and the subsequent angles of interaction when engaged in collaboration.

Collaborative Process

Float is a collaboration between Thomas Montgomery and Perch, born from a shared desire to partner Irish-based design and manufacturing to develop products that are internationally focused and offer truly modern, thought-provoking solutions for workers in the 21st century. The two companies are developing several further collaborations with the aim of a long-term strategic partnership.

Materials

Steel tubing, wood, fabric.

Interview

Simon Dennehy of Perch
talks about the importance of design for education

On the one hand I’m saying that the world doesn’t exactly need another chair, but chairs for educational furniture are so bad. There is so much wrong with seating in schools, and so little has been done because of the perceived cost. Looking at how to solve this became the subject of my Masters at Dublin’s NCAD [National College of Art and Design], where I now also teach. I worked with Gearóid Ó’Conchubhair, and in 2009 we got funding from the EU’s FP7 programme to create TFE: Task Furniture in Education, so now there’s a team of designers on the project.

It’s revolutionary: if you look at marketing brochures for school furniture, you’ll see the perfect ‘right angled child’ sitting down. But we don’t sit like that, and when the seat doesn’t support us, we slouch. When you slouch in your seat it’s because you’ve lost control of your pelvis, and your spine collapses into a ‘C’ slump; and that compromises your heart, lungs, blood flow. Get the seat right, and you’re training young kids how to sit for the rest of their lives.

We stopped taking on clients, and drove our own research-led design, looking at architectural space, psychology, acoustics, physiology. We came up with a patented flexible seat to make the Ray, and Ray Junior, which we’re producing with Labofa in Denmark.

I’m also looking at designs for the soft spaces, where we work away from our desks: in coffee shops and hotels, and in breakout spaces in offices. We sit on couches, lined up in squares, with rectangular furniture – but we don’t hold ourselves in square forms. When we stand, we’re free to express ourselves through body language, but when you hunch over on a sofa, you’re less likely to be confident. You should be able to move around and face people at different angles. The physiological and the psychological are linked, so we found a way to bring that to a piece of furniture: Float, which we’re making with Irish company Thomas Montgomery.

Chairs aren’t new, we have to treat them with respect, and think of the aesthetics. Form follows function, but people make emotional connections through form, so our work has to look beautiful as well. My hope for ID2015 is that it’s a catalyst for change. We want to change the standards of educational furniture across Europe – and the world.